Welcome!

Congratulations on becoming an Anesthesiologist Assistant Student and taking your first steps towards becoming a competent anesthesia provider.  

The purpose of this 'primer' is to help you prepare for your AA-S coursework, specifically during the first few weeks leading up to and following the start of the program.  The blog starts there, at least; however, we hope it will evolve into a comprehensive and authoritative survival guide for first year didactics and clinicals.  Regardless of how talented you all are--of course, we assume you are the best of the best--the first year will invariably challenge each-and-every one of you in some way.  Our goal is to inform you of some of the more difficult challenges early on, and to confer the kind of advice and information that would have helped us in our first year.

And so this blog is meant to give you the benefit of our collective experience, and we only offer our insights as peers.  Please keep in mind that we are not instructors--no one is paying us to do this--and neither this blog nor the second year students contributing to it have any formal responsibility to your education.

As with any functional website, comments from readers are an integral component of how this blog works. Once up-and-running, please remember to use your best discretion on the forum, as well as in your conversations around the hospital and classroom. This means no HIPAA violations (you'll learn what those are soon enough), no public sharing of private hospital information, no disparaging remarks, no spazzing out, etc etc.....You get the idea.

Enough of the legalese.  With out further ado, let's get started. At the top of the page you will see a number of tabs. Each tab will be labeled with a helpful post topic. The topics will be organized in alphabetical order.Feel free to explore the site and remember to have fun. 

Enjoy!

**Disclaimer** This site was designed by CWRU-Houston students. That being said, most of the posts are designed around the curriculum and hospitals in Houston. Each hospital and program will vary but the information should still be helpful to all Anesthesiologist Assistant Students.